Beginner Children's illustrator
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Hello my name is Corlette Douglas and this is my first time posting here but I just wanted a little insight on my pieces. I'm trying to gear my portfolio towards children illustration and I just wanted to know what a few of you guys thought.
I know these don't have titles yet but I'll be taking a typography class to help me with my design elements a little more.
Any advice given would be greatly appreciated.
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Hello Corlette, Welcome aboard!
I like your handling of the medium. Your value control and paint quality is quite nice. The thing you are probably going to have to work on is really setting up a good environment for your characters. Your layouts here don't show much storytelling or composition. They are all centrally laid out. The characters all have almost the same expression. So that's probably where I would start. Take some of these characters (which are nicely designed btw) and get them doing things. Have some characters interacting, show different emotions and times of day, etc.
I am looking forward to seeing your progress here at SVS! : )
Cheers,
Lee -
Thank you for the advice I'll start looking up facial emotions and more settings to put my characters in. Thanks again
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You are on to a great start, Corlette! I really enjoy your stylization, color choices, and textures! There are two things that might take you a step further:
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Storytelling/interaction. At present, the top illustration doesn't have any interaction between the characters. They're posing and looking at us - which can be okay in certain settings, but art directors are looking for illustrators who can tell a story. They assume you are already capable of drawing giraffes and elephants (which are really cute, by the way!). If you haven't already watched it, SVS has a great class on visual storytelling that really gets you asking the right questions to get the job done.
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Value. (This is something I've had to really work on, by the way.) At present, your top image is painted in relatively the same values. Pushing and pulling value makes it easier for us to "read" all the fun elements you have happening. Ask who is most important to the story you're telling and create the strongest value difference around that character. Again, SVS has great tutorials to help you out here (Light and Shadow and Color and Light).
You're on your way, Corlette! I do like your storytelling of the girl with her pose and costume to depict the way she feels. Keep things up and you'll create some beautiful things!
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Welcome to the forums! First I want to say that you have a wonderful style, looks like watercolor but with rich colors. Your color choices are also really nice, it looks like you have a natural ability to choose what colors compliment each other. Are you working digitally or traditionally?
Places to work on, I'd say angles, pose and making sure you use reference. All of your characters are from a straight front on view, it would be great to see you try to mix it up with different angles. Also, overall the poses you've chosen are very static. Adding motion to your characters will help bring them to life. Animators, like Jake Parker, tend to be good at having motion in their drawings since they have experience studying every frame of a given action. This also gives them knowledge of weight, what looks natural and fluid.
Again, welcome, it's great that you're here to grow with us!
